Stephen Colbert's show was canceled in May because America got tired of watching millionaires scream about Trump.
Two months later, Conan O'Brien just let a guest call the President of the United States "a piece of s***" on his podcast.
And you need to hear what Conan said the moment she finished.
What Actually Happened on That Podcast
Leslie Jones appeared on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend Monday and wasted no time.
"Trump is a piece of s***," she announced.
She told old-guard Democrats to "just go away" and let more aggressive progressives take over.
She said Democrats were "showing up to a gunfight with a piece of cake."
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She declared that Americans had been "beaten to submission."
She floated herself as a presidential candidate – then said she'd be "too hard."
Her vision of executive leadership included throwing death row inmates into volcanoes.
“We’re scared of someone, and I don’t know why we’re scared of them,” she said. “We’re looking at the most obvious problem and it’s showing that us as a community have been beaten to submission, and forgotten that we are the people.”
“We’re the people,” she continued. “Are we going to watch this crumble down or are we going to do something?”
Conan O'Brien listened to all of it.
Then he looked at her and said, "That was healing."
Not funny. Not brave.
Healing – as if a comedian calling the sitting President a profane name on a podcast was medicine America needed.
“No, that was good,” he said. “That was fantastic. That was healing.”
The Part That Makes This Unforgivable
Six months ago, Conan O'Brien stood in front of Oxford University and lectured Hollywood about exactly this.
https://twitter.com/DefiantLs/status/2082121399536328744?s=20
He warned his fellow comedians that pure Trump rage had become a creative trap.
"Some comics go the route of 'I'm going to just say F Trump all the time,'" O'Brien told the Oxford Union in January. "And I think you've now put down your best weapon, which is being funny, and you've exchanged it for anger."
He called it being co-opted.
He compared it to a siren luring sailors into rocks.
He said comedians who surrendered their craft to raw political rage had "lost their best tool in the toolbox."
The media celebrated it as rare wisdom from someone who finally got it.
Six months later – the same man, the same podcast – a guest called the President a piece of s***.
And Conan O'Brien said it was healing.
He didn't gently redirect.
He didn't laugh uncomfortably.
He leaned in and validated every word.
That's not hypocrisy in the normal sense.
Hypocrites at least know they've failed.
This is something worse – a man who understood the disease clearly enough to diagnose it publicly, then caught it the moment a guest sat across from him and the room expected approval.
He gave it instantly.
These people don't believe what they say.
They believe what the room rewards.
The Oxford speech was a performance for one audience.
https://twitter.com/TexasTrump2024/status/2082190124541002096?s=20
Monday's podcast was a performance for another.
Conan played both crowds perfectly – and never noticed the contradiction because for people like him, there is no contradiction.
There's only whoever is in the room.
Stephen Colbert's audience figured that out.
They stopped showing up.
Conan O'Brien just showed you he's next in line to learn the same lesson – and he's still too busy thanking people for the healing to see it coming.
Sources:
- Alana Mastrangelo, "Conan O'Brien Thanks Leslie Jones After She Calls Trump 'A Piece of Sh*t': 'That Was Healing'," Breitbart, July 28, 2026.
- Lindsay Kornick, "Conan O'Brien says 'F Trump' comics have been co-opted by anger, 'just screaming'," Fox News, January 7, 2026.
- "Late-night television, once a stronghold of Trump commentary, keeps losing voices," The Boston Globe, January 2, 2026.